Database development and management while working from home [IT and Covid-19]

Just when you thought your database development was running on all cylinders, **BAM** the pandemic hit, and now your database developers are practicing social distancing and working from home (WFH).

As shelter-in-place orders have spread across entire regions, our customers have been asking us about keeping their remote workers productive. Their sysadmins had about zero minutes to prepare for whole teams of database developers who were pushed out of the office and told to work remotely.

“We’re used to having a few of our developers work offsite,” they tell us, “but everybody working from home at once is a completely different life. What do our Toad® licenses allow us to do?”

If you have per-seat Toad licenses at work, you may use them at home.

That’s the TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) on database development from home with your Toad licenses. Your developers may use your company’s in-office per-seat licenses to work from home with Toad. There is no need to buy additional licenses.

It may not make for very inspirational reading, but here’s the excerpt from our Quest® Product Guide that explains our per-seat licensing:

“For Software licensed by this License Type, a license is required for (a) each User who has the ability to access, use, display, run, or otherwise interact with the Software on a shared device or in a virtualized or cloud environment and (b) for every single-user device on which the Software is installed. However, in no case shall a User require more than one license.”

Other remote-work scenarios

Here are a few other scenarios that help explain Toad licensing:

Connecting to remote databases (Oracle) 

“Whew,” you say. “That’s a relief. At least we don’t have to rustle up requisitions and purchase orders for more licenses in the middle of everything else happening here. But what about connecting to our Oracle databases? Once our WFH developers have Toad running, they still need database access. How do they get that?”

The good news is that, if you’re using Toad at home and your databases are in the cloud, you can keep using Toad on them. In fact, if you’re using Toad at home, you can keep using Toad on your databases, whether they are on premises or in the cloud.

That brings us to remote database access.

Setting up a connection

To set up connections to your databases, here are a few measures to try:

• You can make it easy to connect to your databases by exporting connection settings*, distributing them and having your developers import the settings.
• Some developers are new to working from home and have never had to set up their own connection to a DB system before. Our Guide to Using Toad for Oracle shows them how to create and manage connections* to Oracle databases.
• Point your developers to the Toad World blog, where they’ll find hundreds of posts on Oracle-related topics, including How to connect to an Oracle Cloud Database.
• They can also have a look at documentation from Oracle for help in locating the IP address and in using SQL*Network and SSH Tunneling.
• Regarding VPNs, contact your network administrators. Check to see if there are any firewalls or antivirus systems that may be blocking Toad. See if Toad needs to be added to any kind of network permission. Check to see if there is any limit to what data or size of data that can be sent through the VPN. Also check with your Oracle DBA to find if there are any Oracle settings limiting the connection.
• If you see connection errors claiming that the target host or object does not exist*, try to change your firewall or antivirus setting to allow Toad.exe as an application to connect to database. If you’re using direct connect, make sure that the correct information is entered, including the IP address instead of the server name. If your company is using LDAP, ensure you also copy over the LDAP and SQLNET.ora files to your Oracle Client Home (Network\Admin folder) location. And if you use Oracle Full Client, ensure the client is installed correctly, then try to start SQLPlus (you must be able to connect to the database using SQLPlus).

Next steps

Let’s face it: As this coronavirus emergency rolls on, many of your colleagues will get their first taste of working from home. For some, the genie won’t go back into the bottle. They may decide to adopt WFH two, three, four or maybe five days a week.

Naturally, your organization will turn to you to make sure database development and management continues without interruption. Stay tuned for more posts in this series about keeping your infrastructure stable and your enterprise workforce productive in this global medical emergency.

Meanwhile, have a look at the video How to make a database connection using Direct, TNS and LDAP*. It demonstrates the three connection methods built into Toad for Oracle and may give you more ideas for getting your database developers up and working from home more quickly.

Keep washing your hands. We’ll see you in the next post shortly.

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Related information

Blog: Help for database pros working from home

Quest: Quest Ensures Business Continuity for a Remote Workforce

Have questions, comments?

Head over to the Toad for Oracle forum on Toad World®!  Chat with the me, the other Toad developers, and lots of experienced users. 

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